Saltese Wetlands Field Trip Report

Submitted by Ted Smith, Coeur d’Alene Audubon Chapter President

Six of us left the At Home parking area shortly after 8 am on the morning of 9/17/24. We drove to the Doris Morrison Visitor’s Center at the Saltese Wetlands. I was hoping to find a wide variety of waterfowl and was especially hopeful of seeing a variety of shorebirds. We gathered on the patio of the center, trained our scopes and binoculars on the pond and saw exactly 6 ducks (green-winged teal) and 2 great blue herons. Well, that was disappointing!

As we stood and discussed the paucity of bird life we began picking up a few birds nearby. By the time we headed down the hill to the trail we had about 10 species spotted. We headed north to where there was quite a bit of activity around a clump of wild rose. This netted us white-crowned sparrows and savannah sparrow. We then walked south to where the trail turns west and out across the wetlands. In the vicinity of the cottonwood grove we picked up several more species and the highlight of our trip, a nice merlin, that wasn’t the least bit bothered by the birders gawking at him 60 feet away. It was a beautiful day and the birding was okay – not spectacular and the company was grand.

Species List:

Canada Goose

​​​Green-winged teal

​​Ring-necked duck​

California quail

​​Ring-necked pheasant

​​Killdeer

Ring-billed gull​​​

Great blue heron​​

Turkey vulture

Northern harrier​​

Cooper’s hawk​​

Red-tailed hawk

Northern flicker​​

American Kestrel​​

Merlin

Common raven​​

Tree swallow​​​

White-crowned sparrow

Savannah sparrow​​

Song sparrow​​​

Red-winged blackbird

Yellow-rumped warbler